The Green Scene: Planning and Planting Your Houston Landscaping
Just as the right frame showcases your favorite work of art, a well-designed landscape shows off your house to its best effect.
The green, growing garden surrounding your home—sets the tone, creates an ambiance, invokes certain emotions. Its purpose is to provide continual pleasure for you, your family and your guests. To get to this point, the best landscapes begin with an overall plan that addresses your wants and desires, your financial outlay and the required ongoing maintenance.
Houston Landscaping – In the Beginning
Like the architect for your house, a Houston landscaping designer or architect develops an encompassing plan. They will design for and around natural features such as surface terrain and drainage systems, types of soil, and the amount of sunlight and shade your yard receives. They’ll take advantage of your view—and if you don’t have one, they can help create points of interest. All of which means you maximize your enjoyment, avoid long-term problems and minimize any naturally-occurring disadvantages.
“The importance of garden design is that it supports and enhances the architecture of the home,” says Jeff Halper with Exterior Worlds. “It creates an experience and evokes emotion as you come up to the house. You want it to address how you get in and out of the space. What do you walk through as you approach the front door, the pool, the garage? What emotion is elicited?”
Your Dream Garden
During the planning and prep work, you get to dream. What aesthetics do you want to bring to your garden? Do you prefer lots of color or the more subtle effect of different textures of green? If you like color, which ones—sunny yellows and happy pinks, rust and golds, white flowers and silver leaves? Perhaps you own an outdoor sculpture you want to feature or have a theme in mind, such as a baroque garden, specimen garden, or an English garden.
While you dream, you want to factor in how you and your family live in the space. Will your Houston landscaping fit your needs, whether that means lots of kids running around or sophisticated entertainment? Another consideration is making your garden fit the style of your home; for instance, an Asian style garden beautifully complements a contemporary house. Finally, you want to be realistic about the ongoing landscape maintenance. Some elements of a garden require continual care. Other landscape choices are low maintenance. Only you can decide what works for you.
Money Matters
A designer or architect also addresses your budget. During this phase, the scope of the work is defined, including phasing in the different garden elements. Cost factors include items like hardscapes (i.e. patios, decks or walkways); tree preservation, fences and gates, arbors; outdoor kitchens; luxury swimming pools and outdoor fountains; lighting; sprinkler systems; types of grass, shrubs, trees, perennials and seasonal color.
Since 1987, Exterior Worlds has been successfully installing projects in the Memorial, Piney Point Village, Bunker Hill Village, Hunter Creek Village, Tanglewood, River Oaks, West University, Bellaire and the greater Houston area. Call Exterior Worlds at 713-827-2255 to request an estimate.
For more the 20 years Exterior Worlds has specialized in servicing many of Houston's fine neighborhoods.
Maybe you’ve been collecting residential landscape designs for a while. Perhaps you saw a Japanese garden design at a friend’s house that captured your imagination. Or maybe it was a Mediterranean garden design with sweet herbs right off the vine, relaxed spaces for entertainment, and lush, practical vegetation. Possibly your space is limited and you’re looking for small garden design ideas that will have a big impact.
A residential landscape maintenance contract with Exterior Worlds will ensure that regardless of time of year or type of vegetation, a yard will always look green and colorful and remain free of the many deteriorating forces that can destroy plant life and damage the aesthetic of the property. Maintenance contracts lock labor rates into an affordable, predictable budget and ensure timely and consistent services on a regular basis.
Flower beds
The residential landscape architect is a true architect in every sense of the word. He or she studies construction theory and home design in order to identify the geometric forms that are common to both the natural world and the creations of man. This understanding enables the designer to better unify organic forms with home architecture and construct outdoor structures that compliment the house and blend harmoniously with organic elements.
A residential landscape designer develops a landscape master plan that will reflect the architecture of the home and express the core values of the homeowner’s lifestyle. This plan is developed after extensive consultation with the client that helps our team gain an awareness of both client mindset and intended property use. Upon gaining a clear picture of both, the residential landscape designer then sets out to systematically develop key
Exterior Worlds creates advanced home landscaping designs for the express purpose of transforming properties into true outdoor living environments. The success of these environments depends greatly on residential landscape lighting, which serves a number of important functional and aesthetic purposes essential to the experiential elements of landscape design. Accessibility, appreciation, and varying emotional states are all inextricably tied to this highly specialized discipline essential to superior landscape architecture.
On a
Exterior World’s team of expert residential landscapers begins every project with an in-depth consultation with the client. Our approach to landscape development is founded upon the ideals of expression and reflection. Our goal is to create landscaping elements that express the thoughts, feelings, sensibilities and values of our clients in such a manner as to allow them to see their own consciousness, if you will, virtually reflected in the
Residential landscaping creates a world of relaxed enjoyment in the natural world around your home.
Author Jeff HalperIt is far more than open space, a nice yard, and pretty flowers and trees. Professional Houston landscape design is a careful blend of hardscape with softscape that results in areas of interest dedicated to the specifics of your personal lifestyle. Advanced landscape architecture can even create a comfort zone outdoors that rivals
One of the mainstay services of Exterior Worlds is residential pool design. This service entails the meticulous design of a custom swimming pool that compliments the features of the property and speaks to the lifestyle of the homeowner. Experts in pool construction are subcontracted under our invoice to ensure that the highest quality of craftsmanship is fully integrated into the entirety of the Houston landscaping master plan.
One of the
If you have invested in a house of high value, it is imperative that you invest in professional landscaping design that will appropriately magnify the value of the home and the surrounding property. Custom homes, in particular, need far more than attractive yards to compliment their appearance. They need landforms, water features, and exterior structures that directly reflect their architectural keynotes. If these things are done by a professional landscaping
Professional landscape maintenance is the systematic growth management of the organic synergy of your property. All vegetation ultimately works together to both the foundation for and keynote elements of every traditional-style landscape. What you pay good money to install continues to develop after the landscape designer leaves, and it needs professional landscaping maintenance to grow in a healthy and aesthetically pleasing direction. If maintained professionally, vegetation on all levels will
